FIFTEEN

Back in Georgia, the thing I was known best for, other than being the only long-term friend Irene ever had, was my running. I wasn’t curvy or clever with boys or pretty in a glamorous way. The only reason anyone knew my name was because the newspaper wrote an article about school sports and said I was the fastest sixth grader in all of Atlanta.

Rummaging through a box, I found my old running shorts, my field day T-shirt, and a fake bronze medal at the end of a loop of red, white, and blue ribbon. High Point Field Day Champion, it read. I dressed quickly for a run, then stuck my head through the loop and let the medallion hang against my chest. Hands on hips, legs spread apart, chin up, shoulders back, eyes strong, I took on the Wonder Woman pose. My coach made us do that every day before practice. She said it would give us the self-esteem of champions.

Outside, I took another deep breath and drew in the sweet scent of summer. Except for the blue cap overhead, and the occasional pastel flower that hadn’t wilted, the whole earth had turned a thousand different shades of green. I followed the split-rail fence, jogging until I got to the far end of the field where a three-sided pony shed stood empty in the corner. Old, dried leaves had scattered across the dirt floor, and a few straggly pieces of hay clung to the bottom of a metal rack on the wall.

A breeze blew soft and cool on the back of my neck. I stretched my legs one at a time, then started off slowly into the woods, watching to place my feet carefully on solid ground. I was used to running on a level surface; it would be easy to twist an ankle here.

Remnants of a path spread between the trees. I ran along it, beneath scattered white birch and past dogwood laced with red berries in place of pink blooms. The deeper I moved into the woods, the more I felt a part of them, of the trees and earth and sky, and less like some girl transplanted from a city twelve hundred miles away.

The soil turned spongy under my feet. Every so often an area heavy with undergrowth gave way to a patch of sweet grass, soft like a baby’s breath. Ribbons of light wound through the trees, touching everything in their way with a hint of gold. Finally, after running more than I had in almost a month, I gave in to aching lungs and stopped to gulp air that was fresh, damp, and comforting.

A woodpecker drilled holes, stopped, and drilled again. A chorus of birds sang their distinct songs. The only one I recognized was a wood thrush, and I knew that sound because it had been Peter’s favorite on a songbird app he had on his phone. A stone wall started out of nowhere and disappeared past a place where the earth took a dive out of sight.

My heart still pounding, I followed the wall through the woods until it dwindled to a sad pile of rocks at the fringe of a glen where the path, too, disappeared. Trees with rough, gray bark grew far enough apart so the sunlight fell in waves instead of patches. The larger trees had metal pails hanging from their trunks.

Just ahead, an old, swayback building with two chimneys was almost hidden beneath tangled layers of vine and ivy. Barely visible along one side was a stretch of windowpanes crusted with layers of dirt. I pushed away heavy growth, snapped twigs underfoot, and trampled yellow-bloomed weeds to reach a door. Kicking away vines that had built up around the base, I pulled it open just wide enough to squeeze through.

The inside was one large room with a wall-to-wall fireplace that smelled faintly of old smoke and something sweet. Wood plank shelving held an assortment of dusty glass bottles and jugs: blue and green and brown. Two massive cast-iron pots sat by the fireplace. I tapped one with my foot. A bevy of spiders scattered, disappearing between the wall and the floor. Light slanted through the crack in the door, highlighting particles of dust floating gently in the air.

The length of the room was taken up by a long wooden table, with a solitary, straight-backed chair sitting at an angle, as if someone had just gotten up and walked away. I sat down and ran my hand over the top of the table, as if maybe by feel I could know who had lived, or worked, here, and how long it might have been since the place had been useful.

Like on a Ouija board, my fingertips moved to grooves carved into the wood. I leaned close, trying to see in the dim light, and followed the pattern whittled into the corner with my fingers. A heart shape surrounded three sets of initials: JA + DA = MGA

Johnny Austin + Delilah Austin = Magnolia Grace Austin.

His voice was there again, all around me, so real I could almost hear it.

“We’re going to carve our initials here, Magnolia Grace, so we’ll be together forever, no matter what.”